Excelent sound, even with the mp3. What did you get it with ?
What I hear - it seems to me the ballance is slightly to the left,
and istrument appears to be quite close to listener. I don't know
if it was your intention.

My intention was to provide a close, clear presentation with an 'inside the piano' sense of stereo. I think it works well for this modern, fugal texture. To me the balance is correct, but I'm very interested to hear that not everyone would agree.

That is one sweet piano recording. Those DPA microphones are awesome. I like that intimate in your face jazz piano sound. Quite lovely. Nice-sounding preamps also. That touch of reverb gave it some nice space to the recording.

My only complaint would be that there really wasn't enough impact to the dynamics. Maybe a little too much limiting? This recording would be one of those perfect situations with which to mix the dynamically processed track with the unprocessed track to bring back some of the dynamic impact. It's a little too overcontrolled sounding and doesn't bloom and growl where it should. But otherwise quite beautiful sounding.

I also didn't think that it was left heavy? Low keys left. Hi keys right. A nice pianist perspective. But for these kind of Solo piano recordings, I'm more inclined to reverse the left and right. High keys left. Low keys right. Why? Because from an audience perspective the highs appear more left and the lows appear more right. In a concert situation.

Really? I don't think my channels are backwards? But maybe they are on the Internet machine? I don't think so? Ah, so it's not just Bill Gates? So the Internet sounds every bit as bad as television station dynamics processing? I guess so.

No dynamics processing? As beautifully clean and open a recording this is, the player really kicked the crap out of it then. Too bad. So it's an even better recording than it sounds.

So that's real verb? Recorded in a church? Doesn't sound like the average studio to me. Its lovely sounding. Nice work David.

My intention was to provide a close, clear presentation with an 'inside the piano' sense of stereo. I think it works well for this modern, fugal texture. To me the balance is correct, but I'm very interested to hear that not everyone would agree.

Click to expand...

I like it. It does sound close, but suitably so. Not too close for the music IMHO. I've tried to capture piano, but never succeeded. Difficult beast to record.

Could you please describe in a little bit more detail how you placed the mics? height, distance from instrument, where on the instrument perimeter, pictures, etc?

Caveat: I only listened so far on my computer speakers, which I "know" how they sound.

1- I hear the highs in the left. Good perspective.
2 - I like the very contemporary sound. It's not a jazz sound at all.
3 - With the exception of a couple flubs in the pianist's hands, I'd be content owning and having paid $17 for this recording.
4 - I hear plenty of dynamic range. I don't know what you guys are listening to if you don't hear it! Even on my computer speakers, I hear a good 30-40 dB of separation between peaks and troughs, which for relatively close-mic'ed contemporary piano is perfect. Yes, if this were Schumann, you would expect a tad more....but it ain't.

I wonder David - did you measure the mic placement after you placed them, or did you use a formula to determine the appropriate width? If the former, why did you measure? Simply for the overall knowledge, or are you hoping to use this as a starting point (or an ending point) at other times?

I only ask since I feel that you are very detail oriented in general - a trap in which I fall in quite often (my interns often wonder why I have a ruler and a micrometer with me on recording gigs!) It's easy to "miss the forest for the trees" when worrying about such details.

I'm not saying you did that here - this is a lovely recording - one you should be quite proud of!

Thanks for posting the recording, David. Lovely sound and great recording (yes, highs on the left). I liked it a lot, but I'm not really convinced that an "in your face" piano is quite right, even for 20th century works like the Barber.